Love For The Sake Of Allah

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم 

Love is universe’s both light and source of life. As humankind is the most comprehensive fruit of the universe; a love so great to cover the whole universe is hidden inside the heart which is the seed of this fruit. Only the owner of infinite perfection and everlasting can deserve such great love. This is Allah Most High. He deserves our utmost love.  If one loves for the sake of Allah, his love for any creature will not be sorrowful.

Be like Prophet Ibrahim alayhissalaam and say "I do not love those that set" and turn your face to the eternal Beloved. The Quran speaks of his famous statement, “I do not love those that set” [Quran, Al-An'aam 6:76] 

Life is the most beautiful bounty that Allah has given you. When you love your life, you should know that this life is a gift from Allah, and you love it for the sake of Allah.  

We should love the world and creatures living on it with respect to their relation with Allah and whole universe, not for itself, and to say how beautifully it has been created, not how beautiful it is. Do not put the love of anything in the depths of your heart, because the innermost heart is the mirror of Allah, and it belongs to Him.

Loving one’s self means to take pity on it, discipline it and protect it from harmful desires. If you love in this way, your lower-self would not rule over you and would not make you a captive of its desires. Maybe you would rule over your lower-self. You would route it to Allah, instead of meaningless desires.

Love towards parents is considered a prayer and worship if you love them for the sake of Allah. You wish them to live a long life sincerely. You try to render service to them sincerely so that you would gain more rewards because of them. If the essence of this love consists of finite worldly pleasures and interests, you begin to be disturbed by the fact that “they are still alive” with the most nefarious feeling when they grow old to be more dependent on you. You start to fight for your inheritance (their property) while they are still alive and you wildly wait for them to die, who are the reasons that brought you on earth. However, the criteria of loving parents for the sake of Allah are rendering more service to them and wishing a long life for them when you are not dependent on them anymore. When your parents are old, you love them more; thus one loves for the sake of Allah.

Your love towards your children is unconditional and sincere. It is an inexpressible love and a unique blessing to love the beings who Allah entrusted to you to raise. You neither suffer too much from their problems nor wail for their death, because your love comes from Allah. Be patient if they die, and do not be without hope; you should say that they were a gift from my Lord to me, and they were His creatures. . . He took them to a better place. If I had one share in them, He had a thousand shares.” It is thus important to submit to the will of Allah.

In a parent-children relationship, you need to look for certain things in your relationship with your children. For example, are you too exasperated and frustrated to try yet again to help them change their lives? If so, a step to transforming your relationship would be to go against yourself and do it anyway. Or, for example, are you indulging them too much because of the pleasure that their smile brings you? If so, a step to transforming your relationship would be base your dealings with them on raising them well (even when this involves deprivation) rather than on the pleasure that their smile brings to your heart. You can transform the love in your relationship with your children into love that is for the sake of Allah Most High by 1) you love children for the sake of Allah, not for self-satisfaction
, 2) you associate with them for the sake of Allah, not attach to them because they are yours, 3) you realize that they are not the only happiness in your life, 
4) you raise them in the manner that they get to Paradise, 
5) you teach them to love you for Allah.

Loving your spouse is a gift, and your love should not be based on apparent beauty, because when they are old, that physical beauty will disappear. If you love your spouse only for his/her physical beauties and youthfulness, that love will deteriorate soon and eventually you will not get on well with each other. Love should not be based on physical beauty, but on spiritual beauty (righteousness, obedience to Allah), or ethical beauty. This beauty continues to the end of life. The sign that you love them for the sake of Allah is that when they lose their physical beauty, you will continue to love them.

If your love for your friends is for the sake of Allah, you will benefit from this unworldly love and spiritual contact forever because separation or death cannot hinder your friendship and your unworldly relations. If this love is not for the sake of Allah, a delightful reunion of one day results in a sorrowful separation of many hundred days.

The practical way to work towards turning a relationship into one that is sincerely for the sake of Allah is to look at the things that you don't particularly want to do, but would please your Lord if you were to do them, and to then force yourself to do them for the sake of your Lord. If there is something that is good to do and you enjoy doing it anyway, this is a blessing that you should be grateful for, but it doesn't tell yourself how you can improve.

 The specifics would vary from person to person.

O Lord, bestow upon us Your love, and the love of things that make us close to You. Ameen.

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